Confessor by John Gardner

few years, he had made certain never to go near the place. The memories still had claws and teeth.
    In the days before the luxury “guest suites” had been built as an underground complex away from the main house, the Dower House had been a kind of detention barracks, used almost exclusively for the interrogation of defectors and those who had possibly strayed.
    Herbie’s only true sin against the Office had been that time when, through folly and risk-taking, he had been trapped for too long behind the then sinister and flourishing Berlin Wall. On his return he had spent over a year as a guest of the office in the Dower House, undergoing a long, weary and unsettling interrogation conducted mainly by his friend Gus Keene and the young Carole Coles, as she was then. Even Herb, wise to the ways of fleshly lusts, had not suspected that Gus was two-timing his wife, Angela, with the delightful, and very young, Ms. Coles.
    Eventually, Kruger had been exonerated, but his time in the Dower House still haunted his dreams. Frankly, at this moment, he was more on edge because of the enforced visit to the place than because of having to talk to the grieving widow Keene. Yet, he considered, Gus’s own study would be alive with memories.
    Some of his fear subsided as the car swept around the wall of rhododendron bushes and azaleas to reveal the glowing redbrick house with its large sash windows flanking an oak front door, the five windows above that, plus the two dormers in the roof. The Dower House had not been spruced up with just a paint job and work on the bricks and slates. Now a small garden had been built to surround it, the border marked by what appeared to be genuine old iron railings behind which lupin vied with rose and delphinium. It was a far cry from the colorless, stark exterior Herb had known in his day.
    Ginger was three paces behind him as he walked to the door, and his finger was still poised over the bell push when the door swung open and Carole Keene almost catapulted out, her fists bunched and swinging.
    “Who, Herbie? What bastards did this to him? They said you’d find out. Bloody Worboys and the Fat Boy say you might already know, and C’s convinced you’re close to the truth. So, who, Herb? Who’d do this to my lovely Gus?” It all came tumbling out, eyes red with anger, not tears, small fists pummeling against Herbie’s barrel of a chest. C is how members of the SIS refer to the Chief, and it is said the initial comes from the first Chief of what was then the foreign section of the Secret Service Bureau, a man whose lengthy string of names was usually abbreviated to Cumming. That his real name was Mansfield George Smith is neither here nor there.
    “Who, Herb? What idiots? Gus was the only man I ever looked at twice and they’ve pulped him. For Christ’s sake, Herb, who?”
    Herbie had never seen Carole in hysterics before. Serious, yes; moved to tears on two or three occasions; but never this uncontrolled fury of anger, loosed on him. He caught her wrists and barked sharply, “Carole! Hold it! Calm down!” But Carole swept her arms down, in classic break hold, pressuring his thumbs and banging him in the chest.
    “Not another bloody airy-fairy-Lillian!” She all but screamed, turning on her heel and marching back into the cool hallway of the house. “If you can’t tell me now, don’t bother me with platitudes, Herb. Not me ”—thumping her own chest—“not me , not Carole Cool, mistress of this place and beloved widow of darling Gus. Out, Herbie! Out and find the sods!” She slammed across the hallway and through a door before Herbie could catch her again. He ended up in the tiled hall, looking at the slender figure of Bitsy Williams, who moved in front of the door through which Carole had disappeared, as though barring his entrance.
    “She’s been like this since it happened.” Bitsy had an almost breathless voice, throaty, low. Like a cello, Herb thought, but then reflected that he